Monday, October 17, 2011

Healing Experience at Carp Ridge Healing House

Oh yeah, right, "just get over this ASAP." Healing symptoms of fatigue began to build, yet I was still in an active conflict of fear, anger. I felt like I couldn't muster up the energy to cook for myself, to walk outside of the apartment, things just seemed to bottom out for me. I was pushing on my sister to help me out, despite knowing she was already maxed out with her family, work, and the recent passing of her mother-in-law. My sense of abandonment was growing every day.

Chris gave me the name and number of Dr. Katherine Willow, ND, of Carp Ridge EcoWellness Center and Healing House, outside of Ottawa, a healing center which uses German New Medicine as its foundation. Luckily, it was only 5.5 hours away from my sister's home!! I called her the next day, and arranged what I thought would be "a nice convalescence in the country...' Well, let's have Dr. Willow tell her experience with my time there, as she wrote about it in her own blog....

From http://ecowellness.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/healing-house-stories/:


Mariah


When Mariah called me from New York state at the end of June saying she needed two months of rest and good food, I thought this was an easy healing house guest for the summer.

Wrong.

After three days with us, Mariah, an intelligent and sensitive 53 yr old woman, collapsed into bed and needed complete 24 hr care. So began an intense learning process which would deserve many pages to tell properly. It turns out that Mariah had been diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer after prior surgery for ovarian cancer, and unknown even to herself, was waiting for a safe environment to let down into deep healing. Luckily we understood through German New Medicine that it was a healing; from any other perspective it looked like she was dying.

We used every avenue available to us to support Mariah: buying or renting medical equipment, including a wheel chair, for the home; having a lab come to take blood to monitor her progress and our treatments; taking her to see Shannon Rampton, the wonderful chiropractor in Carp, to completely relieve debilitating back pain; having massage therapists Gwen and Amber give her massages and craniosacral therapy in her room when she couldn’t leave her bed; hiring extra help to give care and prevent bedsores; sending her off to a hospital in New York for blood transfusions twice for extreme anemia; having Dr Zhmurko prescribe constitutional homeopathic remedies and Ilsedora Laker consult on the core German New Medicine issues; calling several medical doctors for helpful insights and another perspective; boosting her spirits with various interesting visitors to the centre; letting three year old Felix share his unconditional love (“Are you fixed yet, Mariah?”); inviting Father Jack to offer his spiritual wisdom; using nourishing organic food, vitamins, minerals and medicinal wine to support her in rebuilding her exhausted body; listening with attention while she processed her fears; and most of all, offering constant encouragement that she can do this, pull through and go back into her life with meaning and purpose.

At this very moment, I am sitting in a U.S. hospital beside a sleeping Mariah as she is being given her third and final transfusion before she goes home this Saturday. We had waited with baited breath for the hemoglobin results, as we need her levels to stop dropping in order for her to move forward in her healing. With great exhilaration and high fives we heard that they hadn’t dropped at all in a whole week!! A moment of sheer joy. The gracious and respectful oncologist said Mariah could have a unit of blood, which was thankfully accepted, even though we were hoping for two units. Ten minutes later a nurse announced that two units had been previously set aside and that she could have both. THANK YOU!

So now we sit in a pleasant area with large windows and caring nurses while the life-giving blood drips slowly into Mariah’s veins. I get to write and she gets to relax, eat and watch the cooking shows on TV (she is an excellent cook herself). I will prepare a report on her process with suggestions for the next practitioners she will work with in New York to continue the healing and we’ll be a support from a distance. Mariah is welcome to come back in the future, maybe as a German New Medicine teacher herself, helping others pull through situations that might look hopeless to the medical community.

We have come through an extraordinary journey together and have learned much—both about the possibilities of a healing house in conjunction with all kinds of medicines as well as about ourselves. What Mariah has given us with her faith in the natural healing process will serve many others and help lay the template for how to work with extreme situations. We all thank her, hug her, wish her well on the next leg and hope to see her back.

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